Analyses of water footprint of Beijing in an interregional input-output framework

Beijing is under severe water resource pressure due to the rapid economic development and growing population. This study quantitatively evaluates the water footprint of Beijing in an interregional input-output framework with a focus on blue water resources and uses. The inter-connections of water resources between Beijing and other provinces are analyzed with a sectoral specification. The results show that the total water footprint of Beijing is 4498.4 10⁶ m³/year, of which 51% is from the external water footprint acquired through virtual water import. Agriculture has the highest water footprint of 1524.5 10⁶ m³/year with 56% coming from external sources. The main virtual water provider for Beijing is Hebei, another water scarce region, from which Beijing receives virtual water of 373.3 10⁶ m³/year with 40% from agriculture. The results of this study suggest that the interregional trade coordination, especially for the main sectors with high water use intensity, is important for enhancing the efficiency of regional and national water resource utilization.     

The external water footprint of the Netherlands: Geographically-explicit quantification and impact assessment

This study quantifies the external water footprint of the Netherlands by partner country and import product and assesses the impact of this footprint by contrasting the geographically-explicit water footprint with water scarcity in the different parts of the world. The total water footprint of the Netherlands is estimated to be about 2300 m³/year/cap, of which 67% relates to the consumption of agricultural goods, 31% to the consumption of industrial goods, and 2% to domestic water use. The Dutch water footprint related to the consumption of agricultural goods, is composed as follows: 46% related to livestock products; 17% oil crops and oil from oil crops; 12% coffee, tea, cocoa and tobacco; 8% cereals and beer; 6% cotton products; 5% fruits; and 6% other agricultural products. About 11% of the water footprint of the Netherlands is internal and 89% is external. Only 44% of virtual-water import relates to products consumed in the Netherlands, thus constituting the external water footprint. For agricultural products this is 40% and for industrial products this is 60%. The remaining 56% of the virtual-water import to the Netherlands is re-exported. The impact of the external water footprint of Dutch consumers is highest in countries that experience serious water scarcity. Based on indicators for water scarcity the following eight countries have been identified as most seriously affected: China; India; Spain; Turkey; Pakistan; Sudan; South Africa; and Mexico. This study shows that Dutch consumption implies the use of water resources throughout the world, with significant impacts in water-scarce regions.     

A dynamic analysis of water footprint of Jinghe River basin

Water footprint in a region is defined as the volume of water needed for the production of goods and services consumed by the local people, Ecosystem services are a kind of important services, so ecological water use is one necessary component in water footprint. Water footprint is divided into green water footprint and blue water footprint but the former one is often ignored.In this paper waterJootprint includes blue water needed by agricultural irrigation, industrial and domestic water demand, and green water needed by crops, economic forests, livestock prochtcts, forestlalands and grasslands. The study calculates the footprint of the Jinghe River basin in 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2005 with quarto methods. Results of research show that water footprints reached 164.1 ×10^8m3, 175. 69 ×10^8m3 and 178. 45 ×10^8m3 respectively in 1990, 1995 and 2000 including that of ecological water use, but reached 77.68×10^8m3, 94.24×10^8m3, 92.92×10^8m3 and 111.36 ×10^8m3 respectively excluding that of ecological water use. Green water.footprint is much more than blue water footprint; thereby, green water plays an important role in economic development and ecological construction The dynamic change of water footprints shows that blue water use increases rapidly and that the ecological water use is occupied by economie and domestic water use. The change also shows that water use is transferred from primary industry to secondary industry In primary industry, it is transferred from crops farming to forestry, and animal agriculture. The factors impelling the change include development anticipation on econonomy; government policies, readjustment of the industrial structure, population growth, the raise of urbanization level, and structurul change of consumption, low level of waler-saving and poor ability of waste water treatment.With blue water use per unit, green water use per unit, blue water use structure and green water use structure, we analyzed the difference of the six ecologieal function districts of the Jinghe River     

The water footprints of Morocco and the Netherlands: Global water use as a result of domestic consumption of agricultural commodities

The volume of international trade in agricultural commodities is increasing faster than the global volume of production, which is an indicator of growing international dependencies in the area of food supply. Although less obvious, it also implies growing international dependencies in the field of water supply. By importing food, countries also import water in virtual form. The aim of the paper is to assess the water footprints of Morocco, a semi-arid/arid country, and the Netherlands, a humid country. The water footprint of a country is defined as the volume of water used for the production of the goods and services consumed by the inhabitants of the country. The internal water footprint is the volume of water used from domestic water resources; the external water footprint is the volume of water used in other countries to produce goods and services imported and consumed by the inhabitants of the country. The study shows that both Morocco and the Netherlands import more water in virtual form (in the form of water-intensive agricultural commodities) than they export, which makes them dependent on water resources elsewhere in the world. The water footprint calculations show that Morocco depends for 14% on water resources outside its own borders, while the Netherlands depend on foreign water resources for 95%. It is shown that international trade can result in global water saving when a water-intensive commodity is traded from an area where it is produced with high water productivity to an area with lower water productivity. If Morocco had to domestically produce the products that are now imported from the Netherlands, it would require 780 million m³/year. However, the imported products from the Netherlands were actually produced with only 140 million m³/year, which implies a global water saving of 640 million m³/year.     

Long-term global water projections using six socioeconomic scenarios in an integrated assessment modeling framework

In this paper, we assess future water demands for the agricultural (irrigation and livestock), energy (electricity generation, primary energy production and processing), industrial (manufacturing and mining), and municipal sectors, by incorporating water demands into a technologically-detailed global integrated assessment model of energy, agriculture, and climate change — the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM). Base-year water demands – both gross withdrawals and net consumptive use – are assigned to specific modeled activities in a way that maximizes consistency between bottom-up estimates of water demand intensities of specific technologies and practices, and top-down regional and sectoral estimates of water use. The energy, industrial, and municipal sectors are represented in fourteen geopolitical regions, with the agricultural sector further disaggregated into as many as eighteen agro-ecological zones (AEZs) within each region. We assess future water demands representing six socioeconomic scenarios, with no constraints imposed by future water supplies. The scenarios observe increases in global water withdrawals from 3710 km³ year^− 1 in 2005 to 6195–8690 km³ year^− 1 in 2050, and to 4869–12,693 km³ year^− 1 in 2095. Comparing the projected total regional water withdrawals to the historical supply of renewable freshwater, the Middle East exhibits the highest levels of water scarcity throughout the century, followed by India; water scarcity increases over time in both of these regions. In contrast, water scarcity improves in some regions with large base-year electric sector withdrawals, such as the USA and Canada, due to capital stock turnover and the almost complete phase-out of once-through flow cooling systems. The scenarios indicate that: 1) water is likely a limiting factor in meeting future water demands, 2) many regions can be expected to increase reliance on non-renewable groundwater, water reuse, and desalinated water, but they also highlight an important role for development and deployment of water conservation technologies and practices.     

Water valuation at basin scale with application to western India

A parsimonious hydro-economic model for a data scarce dryland area is presented. It features a basin level decentralized water allocation mechanism which is adapted to incorporate sustainable water use and to deal with the externalities from upstream-downstream linkages. We formulate the profit maximization problem of various agents in a basin, each identifying a sub-basin, who operate within the boundaries of a spatially explicit model that describes the dominant hydrological processes. We address issues of non-convexities and non-steady state conditions and elicit the dependence of a decentralized water allocation on geophysical properties of the basin. In particular, the approach describes how the competition between the drying and drainage functions of sub-basins in dryland areas manifests itself in the optimal valuation of water. The application to an area of over 500,000 km² and 34 sub-basins in western India indicates that intra-basin cooperation could be beneficial; valuation of inter basin flows as a percentage of respective sub-basin income is on an average around 30% when each sub-basin includes downstream valuation as well.     

The water footprint of coffee and tea consumption in the Netherlands

A cup of coffee or tea in our hand means manifold consumption of water at the production location. The objective of this study is to assess the global water footprint of the Dutch society in relation to its coffee and tea consumption. The calculation is carried out based on the crop water requirements in the major coffee and tea exporting countries and the water requirements in the subsequent processing steps. In total, the world population requires about 140 billion cubic metres of water per year in order to be able to drink coffee and tea. The standard cup of coffee and tea in the Netherlands costs about 140 l and 34 l of water respectively. The largest portions of these volumes are attributable to growing the plants. The Dutch people account for 2.4% of the world coffee consumption. The total water footprint of Dutch coffee and tea consumption amounts to 2.7 billion cubic metres of water per year (37% of the annual Meuse runoff). The water needed to drink coffee or tea in the Netherlands is not Dutch water. The most important sources for the Dutch coffee are Brazil and Colombia and for the Dutch tea Indonesia, China and Sri Lanka. The major volume of water to grow the coffee plant comes from rainwater. For the overall water need in coffee production, it makes hardly any difference whether the dry or wet production process is applied, because the water used in the wet production process is a very small fraction (0.34%) of the water used to grow the coffee plant. However, the impact of this relatively small amount of water is often significant. First, it is blue water (abstracted from surface and ground water), which is sometimes scarcely available. Second, the wastewater generated in the wet production process is often heavily polluted.     

Sustainability of national consumption from a water resources perspective: The case study for France

It has become increasingly evident that local water depletion and pollution are often closely tied to the structure of the global economy. It has been estimated that 20% of the water consumption and pollution in the world relates to the production of export goods. This study analyzes how French water resources are allocated over various purposes, and examines impacts of French production in local water resources. In addition, it analyzes the water dependency of French consumption and the sustainability of imports. The basins of the Loire, Seine, Garonne, and Escaut have been identified as priority basins where maize and industrial production are the dominant factors for the blue water scarcity. About 47% of the water footprint of French consumption is related to imported agricultural products. Cotton, sugar cane and rice are the three major crops that are identified as critical products in a number of severely water-scarce river basins: The basins of the Aral Sea and the Indus, Ganges, Guadalquivir, Guadiana, Tigris & Euphrates, Ebro, Mississippi and Murray rivers. The study shows that the analysis of the external water footprint of a nation is necessary to get a complete picture of the relation between national consumption and the use of water resources.     

Ecological footprint accounting in the life cycle assessment of products

We present and discuss ecological footprint (EF) calculations for a large number of products and services consumed in the western economy. Product-specific EFs were calculated from consistent and quality-controlled life cycle information of 2630 products and services, including energy, materials, transport, waste treatment and infrastructural processes. We formed 19 homogeneous product/process subgroups for further analysis, containing in total 1549 processes. Per group, the average contribution of two types of land occupation (direct and energy related) to the total EF was derived. It was found that the ecological footprint of the majority of products is dominated by the consumption of non-renewable energy. Notable exceptions are the EFs of biomass energy, hydro energy, paper and cardboard, and agricultural products with a relatively high contribution of direct land occupation. We also compared the ecological footprint results with the results of a commonly used life cycle impact assessment method, the Ecoindicator 99 (EI). It was found that the majority of the products have an EF/EI ratio of around 30 m²-eq. yr/ecopoint ± a factor of 5. The typical ratio reduces to 25 m² yr/ecopoints by excluding the arbitrary EF for nuclear energy demand. The relatively small variation of this ratio implies that the use of land and use of fossil fuels are important drivers of overall environmental impact. Ecological footprints may therefore serve as a screening indicator for environmental performance. However, our results also show that the usefulness of EF as a stand-alone indicator for environmental impact is limited for product life cycles with relative high mineral consumption and process-specific metal and dust emissions. For these products the EF/EI ratio can substantially deviate from the average value. Finally, we suggest that the ecological footprint product data provided in this paper can be used to improve the footprint estimates of production, import and export of products on a national scale and footprint estimates of various lifestyles.     

The projected costs and benefits of water diversion from and to the Sultan Marshes (Turkey)

The Sultan Marshes in the Develi Basin, Anatolia, one of twelve internationally important wetlands of Turkey, have been severely affected by the construction of an irrigation project in 1988. Intensive use of surface and ground water in irrigation has caused more than a 1 m decline in water levels and has affected the wetlands' ecological characteristics. Previous studies indicate that Sultan Marshes will need more water to restore viable ecological conditions. In this study, we analyze how economic benefits from agriculture and wetlands would be affected if moderate amounts of water were diverted from agriculture back to wetlands in the Develi Basin. By estimating total and marginal costs and benefits associated with water diversions, we determined the optimum or economically-efficient amount of water diversion. When only direct-use values of the wetland (animal grazing, plant harvesting, and ecotourism) were included in the analysis, the optimum amount of water diversion to the wetlands was found to be 5.2 million m³ year^− 1 (165 L sec^− 1), which compares to about 62 million m³ year^− 1 (1,957 L sec^− 1) used in irrigation. When wastewater treatment benefits (an indirect-use value) were added, the optimum amount rose to 7 million m³ year^− 1. Overall, the analysis showed that water diversion from agriculture to the Sultan Marshes is economically preferable.